More pie was waiting for us, just before the junction at Interstate 10, inside a large, empty and clean – very clean - casino. It’s one of the saddest things, a casino in the middle of the day: a giant, garish edifice with lights on and fountains spewing, built on the backs of people who come in the middle of the afternoon, those poor souls with gambling addictions, shuffling along and spending their paychecks at the slot machines, wasting their rent at the tables, getting further into a hole dug with the happy help of the 29 Palms Band of Mission Indians. Here. We’ll hold the light for you. Go ahead and keep shoveling. Called children of the Wolf, the Band runs the Spotlight 29 Casino, which was formerly known as the Trump Spotlight 29 Casino, housing 2,000 slot machines and 35 tables, along with two restaurants and the worst buffet ever, so bad that it should have been named the botulism buffet. $9.95 – all the stomach cramps you can stand! Worse yet, these children of the Wolf don’t know how to make apple pie – not even close. Or mac ‘n cheese, for that matter, unless you like your macaroni with a hard skin on the top of it. The seafood, well, I didn’t dare try the seafood.

As promised, the stomach cramps hit shortly after the second helping – hey, it was a buffet - and now we know what it takes to keep buffet food costs down. I could only hope that I could power through the cramps before our next pie destination.